Top of the Pops Magazine Article Analysis

Top of the Pops Magazine Article Analysis

Top of the Pops magazine has a target audience of pre-teen girls, and the genre of music is pop. This Top of the Pops article is a double page spread of an interview with popular boy band The Wanted. The first page of the double page spread is the interview with the band, and the second page of the double page spread is for the images of the band and a box that has one question asked by the interviewer to the band. The whole article would attract a large audience of girls to it because they are a famous boy band that a lot of girls would fancy and would want to know more about what they personally have to say about curtain subjects. On the first page of the double page spread when looking at the headline that the interview will be on them working out, which would attract a lot of girls because they will want to learn more about them working out and how they keep fit. The image of the band is in the centre of the double page spread, meaning when looking at just one page you can see that half the image has been cut of from the rest, when there is an image in the  centre of the double page spread the reader will be attracted to the image and they will read the interview to find out more about why that images is there, the large ratio of images to text suit’s the very young audience. Another thing that would attract the audience to the article is the stand first, because it tells the reader what the interview is going to be about in just three sentences. It says at the top right of the second page ‘Exclusive interview’, this convention of a magazine is the first thing that the reader will see when flicking to that page, and the reader will become interested in knowing what is so exclusive about the interview. Another thing that the reader first sees when flicking to that page is a smaller image of the band working out, this would straight away attract the reader to the article because they will want to know more about how they keep fit and healthy.

The audience of the magazine can keep interest throughout the article with the images of the band, as the image takes up a lot of the page the reader would be looking at the image so they can relate what the member is saying with the image of them, so that they have an image of the member in the article when reading about them so they can relate. Another way that the reader can keep interest is that there is direct mode of address from the image of the band, this helps the readers relate to the image and they will become attracted to the image because of the direct mode of address. On the second page of the double page spread there is a box with a question from the interviewer asking “what do the boys first notice in a girl?”, with any girl that is attracted to the boy band then they will want to know what kind of girl they are interested in and what they notice first, with the girls reading the interview they will become interested to know more about them and what kind of girl they like. The article has bright colours that attract the eye of the reader keeping them engrossed in the article, and keeps from the reader from getting bored. The comments make by the members taken out of the interview are placed next to the member that said it, making the reader want to know why that member said that comment and what the question was. The whole layout keeps the audience interested because they don’t lose interest, it’s not complex.

When looking at this article I would believe that the target audience of the magazine are girls aged 10 to 15, this is because the article is on a boy band that would attract the readers. Another reason that the target audience would be girls aged 10 to 15 is the colours used, they are very girly colours, with the girly colours being pink and a mix between blue and purple, these colours suit more girls than they do boys. The language is suitable for the target audience because of the slang used, for example, ‘lanky’, ‘chubby’, ‘pig out’, these are very common slang words that most people now believe that they are not slang words anymore, even though they are not the strongest slang words most commonly used the target audience for the magazine would be able to relate to them, the target audience for the magazine would be able to relate to them, whereas if the target audience was adults, they would be confused to why there are slang words in the interview. The interview is very informal meaning that the target audience will be able to relate to the interview, if the interview was formal the target audience would become bored and would either turn to a different article or they would start to wonder when reading.
The colour scheme used in the article is pink, white, black and mix between blue and purple. The pink is used for the stand first and to highlight the members of the band. The black is only used for the text in the interview. The white is used for the masthead and the comments that the members made by the image. The mix between blue and purple colour is used for the background to the masthead making it stand out to everything else, and used for the questions that the interviewer asks, which separates all the questions.